My wife is a postal carrier.

She is 5 years from retirement and determined to stick it out.The whole organization is a mess. Much of the problem is indeed management. I've been to the main facility my wife works from on more than a few occasion over the past 15 years and each time I'm impressed by the number of cheap suits walking around doing diddly squat. I've witnessed the BS. It's fairly typical of government agencies to be corrupt. Money goes into the USPS and management finds all sorts of ways to create high paying do-nothing jobs for family and friends who can't get a job in the real world.

While I'm not a fan of unions in general, if it wasn't for the NACL, there wouldn't be a USPS at all. It would have collapsed from it's own weight. The carriers union spends an enormous amount of time herding the out of control management making the working conditions for carriers and clerks nearly intolerable.

Postal workers as a rule openly admit to being apathetic and occasionally belligerent. If you had to deal the suits and the constant BS, you'd have a lousy attitude too. They also have to deal with the general public. Think about that.But all-in-all, I think privatization would be the most efficacious move. Most private companies these days like to run lean and clean. There is no place for polyester suits that only take up space and make life difficult for the real producers.

It is an outdated institution.

The USPS has outlived its usefulness. Electronic communication via email, social media sites, and text messaging have made "snail mail" nearly obsolete. While traditional paper letters are preferred in some instances the volume is not high enough to warrant a taxpayer-funded delivery option. As well there are already private options to deliver letters and packages. On top of that the USPS reported a loss of nearly $16 billion for 2012.

So, the need for a public delivery system no longer exists because private business can fulfill the role, the volume of physical mail has declined, and the USPS cannot operate at a profit (or even an acceptable level of loss).

The USPS should be dissolved and its assets sold off or transferred to other government entities.

Profit is the mother of innovation

The USPS is and has been consistently losing money and requiring bailouts for quite some time now. The problem is that many people no longer have a use for the postal service with the technological innovations like the internet. These have made the USPS increasingly obsolete and thus more and more difficult for them to make a profit. Now, this is where the greatness of our free market system comes in. Allow an interested company to take over the postal service, or simply discontinue it. If it is discontinued, you will soon find other companies moving to fill the void. They will find a way to make the service profitable. The argument that is it not a broken system is almost laughable, as the billions of dollars the postal service has lost over the last several years shows that clearly, something is not working. When a company provides a service for a profit, they look for ways to innovate, to make a service profitable, efficient and well sought-after. That is what would happen should a privatization of the postal service occur. Otherwise, you can merely continue to pour money into saving a system which is no longer capable of efficiently functioning.

Capitalism: Economy's Savior

Privatization is the answer to several of America's problems. Private schools have better grades the public? Boom!: Let's privatize it. Road Systems? The Same. Waterways? Bingo. The USPS is going under, what do you expect when its run by people who have never been able to get this country to make a profit.

Yes we should

The United States Postal Office is a venerable old institution but its best days are behind it and it is currently in an irreversible decline toward its demise. Technology such as the internet has left "snail mail" behind; this is a trend that will only continue as newer generations can't recall a time when the internet didn't exist. The Post Office is bleeding money and the government is not equipped or competent to turn it around. Let the private sector figure out a way to save it, if it can be saved.

Yes it should be privatized

Yes, I think that if the USPS was privatized then it would be better off both financially and fiscally. The USPS is way too far in debt and something needs to be done for its immediate future to make sure that it remains solvent, and I think that privitazation would definitely help.

Extremely rude individuals I have ever met.

It's time to put those rude and lazy folks to work. Only a private entity can bring customer service and efficiency to an old and meager system. The unions are bringing inefficiencies and since the job security is almost guaranteed there is no incentive to provide customer service. Try any post office and you will find some of the most inconsiderate folks working there.

USPS and inefficiency of its employees.

I am small business and ship hundreds of packages by Priority mail each day. I would like to share a personal story with you.

For some apparent reason. USPS loses or doesn't scan 5-10 packages a week. Another 5-10 packages get severely damaged in the mail. With the recent changes in USPS, I have been filing for insurance on the damage packages or lost packages. Then a nasty USPS employee calls me up and leaves a message. She said I can't use there pickup service anymore because she said my items that are liquids over 13 oz need to be drop off at Postal Retail site. I don't have time to argue with her. So I said ok. So I went to post office and it was about the close. A nice USPS delivery guy said, "I can hand him the package." So I even helped him to bring the packages to the truck. Then 30 minutes later the same nasty woman called again, " Told me the same thing I can't give it to USPS truck guy." Then she continues to say, "She says my liquids are hazmat and I should look up my information." I knew my information and USPS adheres to US department of transportation laws and standards. All my plant nutrients are considered "Not Regulated" meaning the DOT does not deem it hazmat and dangerous." Second how does she know what inside the package. She not the post master or postal inspector. So she been opening the packages?

I never had issues with UPS or Fedex. They also have to adhere to DOT standards. They are 3 billion dollars in the green. The employees are lazy and inefficient at USPS. They have no accountability. I see the guy who picks up my package just riding in circle to kill the time plus wasting our tax paid gasoline. While the few good people who work hard at USPS are group in with them. They have no position to be nasty or awful to there customers. We are lending them our tax paying dollars and they are still failing.

Stop the unions because they breed inefficiency and laziness. The employees don't have to do much to get a lot. The way USPS conducts business is damn shame. No other business would survive if we all followed the USPS business model. For you people who say no to privatization. Please and continue pour more of your tax paying dollars into a system that obviously does not work. I hope all those who say "no" to privatization, you enjoy the nasty USPS employees and them losing your package. My USPS Sorting facility is so bad, all the people in the area give it the nickname "the blackhole."The highest rating I have found for post office was 3 stars, come on. The average 1 1/2 stars. This is pathetic.

There is NO safety net for me when my business fails. So there should be a safety net for them?

Inefficient use of capital and resources

The US postal service is losing money every day and needs to be privatized in order to continue to provide a service to the public. Without privatizing the postal service it will go bankrupt and will end up being supported by other government revenues that should be used for other programs.

The USPS doesn't work the way it is.

I live in a major city a the mail is terrible, half the time they don't deliver the mail to the right people in my building forget using the tracking to see where a package is. Half the time when they tell you it's out for delivery you don't get it that day or they never attempt to deliver it and just make you pick it up at the PO. If a real business ran this way it would be bankrupt. If any employee of a business slacked off like the mail carriers do they would be on the unemployment line! People employed by the USPS need to be held accountable for the lack of work ethics!

The Post Office Is communication at COST,

In 2006 Congress and President Bush passed a law that required the USPS to fund 75 years of RETIREE HEALTH BENEFITS in 10 years at 5.5 Billion a year. This has nothing to do with the operating expenses of delivering the mail but has been repeatedly used as an excuse to privatize the USPS

Guaranteed in the Constitution

The only service that the government and congress are allowed to own is the postal service. You can make the argument for privatization for any other public enterprise owned by the US government, but they aren't guaranteed the same status as the postal service. Also note that actually, the postal service stopped receiving tax payer subsidies in the 1980's and has actually been making its profit not from letter mail but from the delivery of packages from internet orders. So overall, the postal service in the US should not be privatized because congress is guaranteed to have control over it via the constitution and it actually isn't that defunct in terms of profitability thanks to online orders.

Are you stupid?

Why would you privatize the USPS, the point of it is that its government regulated mail carrier system. No, do no privatize it, that would be stupid. Reform: yes. Re-evaluate: yes. Completely remove: yes. There's already plenty of private companies that operate in this field of business. There's no point in cutting off this branch.

No, Reform it, But Do Not Privatize.

Sure, the postal system has its share of problems and is in dire need of reform. However, selling it off and making a private business out of it will not help. Privatization is not the answer for everything, and there as some things that cannot be run like a business. This, just like roads and bridges, is a matter of public infrastructure meant for the common good, not for investor profit.

If its not broke, don't fix it

Considering how much mail the post office handles on a daily basis and the percentage of mail that gets lost or mis-delivered is very small, I think our postal service is actually doing a pretty good job. These days we don't have to use the post office if we don't want to, we can pay bills online or through our bank, or just go to the company in person and write out the check. We don't have to wait on the mail man to receive government checks, food stamps or pay checks, everything is automatically deposited. There are private companies already in place to handle your mailing needs if you really do not want the USPS to handle it, but I think we need to be able to keep our post office in place as it is. It serves a purpose and is accessible to everyone who wants or needs to use it.

Internal changes do resemble privatization...

About 8 years ago new-hires called "PSE's" were only offered 35 hours per week, and would be up for re-evaluation each year and do not have the same union protection as "career regulars" hired before 2008. Now that the postal service can hire part-time truck drivers, some of those drivers have part-time driving jobs elsewhere. The federal DOT safety regulators do not allow private companies to let their truck drivers drive more than 10 hours a day, yet the USPS is hiring truck drivers with second part-time driving job putting in a 14 hour day driving. If the route hours would have stayed at 40 hours a week, this type of safety violation and corruption would not be happening. When Pitney Bowes companies are hauling the mail paying employees less with less regulations the sanctity of the mail will suffer. Remember when America funded the clean-up/reorganization of Iraq and at first hired private contractors that not only did not do the job, but ripped off the government. Government civil agencies ended up completing the job because at least they did it honestly and were regulated.

Privatizing would lead to massive corruption and theft

As a Federal Government organization there are many regulations in place and postal inspectors that protect the sanctity of the mail. Fed Ex and UPS are very expensive because of the high percentage of lost or stolen goods. That is why they had to implement a tracking system to help pin down where these losses were occurring and to present a false sense of security for their customers. The USPS is a lot less expensive and a much more trustworthy way to mail anything.

Too much risk with privatization

The USPS regulations with mailable content and conduct in handling mail keeps content as secure as possible. Privatization of the postal service would run risk of more customers becoming identity theft victims via rogue employees while mail is in transit, and peoples' expensive orders are more likely to be stolen because it would be easier for someone to get away with it. The postal inspection service, in conjunction with scanner GPS, timelogging, mandatory item tracking (a single missed activity scan in a day out of whatever volume of mail is a pretty big deal in the office,) and human communication, catch suspicious activity within the business quickly, so that they may be prosecuted to the fullest extent of federal law and be difficult to consider for future employment. Internationally, mail theft has been a more serious problem than domestically because of a weakness in sanctity of mail - I have has a parcel I ordered from the UK, shipped via Royal Mail, get stolen before it reached American shores, and it's not unusual to read eBay reviews about parcels that were never received from an international sale by an otherwise clean seller. At present, on a different note, USPS's major strength is now in parcel services and is not just a letter service, thus has adapted to fit the modern needs of people in a way that simple email cannot. USPS is leading over FedEx and UPS, whom cannot keep up with Amazon dropoffs and usually hand off their own parcels to USPS, and offers better rates and speeds for parcel delivery services. It has not received any taxpayer money to run in over 30 years. USPS is fine and should be left alone.

Privatization is the worst idea ever.

The bottom line is this all about union busting. Ever since Federal (including air traffic controllers and postal employees) Unions lost the ability to strike, their strength has seen a decline. There is a misperception that the U S Service is in 'debt' , that 'debt' was a pre-fund mandate put in place by congress in order to cover the cost future retirements. Americans have forgotten why the US Postal Service was created and why it must remain. Universal delivery and the flow of information. Oh yah and don't forget about that package from Amazon!

Privatizing could be good for certain letters

Privatizing is supportive of other people .People think that privatizing is good and can help others. It could keep letters secret from everyone else and it will only be between the two people. Some things can help people in life and they can be little ones. This is a little one. Do something about it